Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:00am and headed toward Mt. Rainier National Park in an attempt to catch sunrise over Reflection Lakes. As i entered the park, I saw oranges and pinks starting to glow underneath the cloud layer in the sky. By the time I made it to Reflection Lakes, I had missed the fiery skies by no more than 10 minutes. Since I missed sunrise, I decided to break out the GND and ND filters for some landscape shots of Rainier over the lakes. Here are a few of those shots.

After Reflection Lakes, I decided to make my way up the Bench Lakes trail for more reflection shots. On the way up the trail I noticed that a lenticular cloud was forming over Rainier.

"Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form in the troposphere, normally in perpendicular alignment to the wind direction."

Once I made my way up the trail and to the lake, I set up my camera on a tripod for photos and my iPhone on the ground to capture a time-lapse of the cloud formation in action. Here are a few shots of the hike up to the lake and at the lake. There is also a video of the time-lapse photos.